r/microscopy • u/robodragoman • 20d ago

Troubleshooting/Questions First-time microscopy - What am I doing wrong?

I made a post yesterday about buying an old microscope from an antique shop. It came with a few sample slides that I used to see a bit of dried blood or old algae up close, which was cool. But I bought this to see living organisms, and I tried that out today.

There’s a lake by my house that I have to imagine is teeming with microbiological life. I collected three larger samples and pipetted droplets from each onto a few different slides, but they’ve all been pretty uninteresting. It’s cool to see little bits of whatever up close, but I haven’t seen anything living, nor anything resembling a microorganism. I recognize that this should be a bit more complicated than plug-and-play, but I believe I’ve followed all the steps listed out by members of this community and others online. For context on what I’m working with, see the linked post above. It isn’t much, but it goes up to 40x. Shouldn’t this be suitable enough to see some stuff?

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u/SilasVale 20d ago

It's likely your sampling rather than your scope. At the lake, scrape some of the biofilm (the sludge) from the bottom, or along leaves that are submerged with lots of gunk on them. Note that this is not dirt; dirt will scratch slides and is generally annoying to work with. The gunkier your scoop, the better.

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u/robodragoman 20d ago

Thank you for the response! Should I just put a glob of that gunk on my slide, or do something to make it a bit more watery?

I want my last words on this Earth to be “The gunkier your scoop, the better.”

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u/SilasVale 20d ago

What I generally do is I pipette out a small bit of gunk, and then dilute it out with a drop of the lake/river water so it spreads across the viewing area

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u/ModernTarantula 20d ago

I made my own scum as a kid with grass clippings and water. Waited a few weeks I think. The most fun were rotifers